‘They Will Be Dust’: Toronto Review

Dir: Carlos Marques-Marcet. Spain/Italy/Switzerland. 2024. 106mins

The flatly declarative title of They Will Be Dust suggests that the idea of death is something we are just going to have to get used to. This matter-of-fact approach seeps into the style of Carlos Marques-Marcet’s daring fourth feature (following Goya-winnning 2014 debut 10,000 KM, Anchor And Hope and The Days To Come), an admirably unsentimental and involving end-of-life drama that comes, unusually, peppered with dance sequences. The film could have perfectly well been played as straight drama, carried by performances from veterans Angela Molina and Alfredo Castro. The daringly experimental choice to break the emotional flow with dance has helped the film to win Toronto’s Platform award, but may divide viewers when Dust opens Valladolid festival in October before releasing theatrically in Spain in November.

An admirably unsentimental and involving end-of-life drama 

The opening sequence, featuring actor Claudia (Spanish grande dame Molina) going wild with pain and being calmed down by her theatre director husband Flavio (Chilean actor Castro) and daughter Violeta (Monica Almirall Batet, in her debut feature), has a potent rawness that is not replicated throughout the rest of the film. With Maria Callas singing an aria from Samson And Delilah in the background, the scene morphs into ballet – a memorable highlight. 

Claudia has a brain tumour and has decided to end her life in Switzerland, while Flavio, unable to face life without her, has decided to die by her side. The emotional consequences of this are not played out as fully as they might be, but the film’s first section does a great job of persuading us that Claudia and Flavio, both from the theatrical world, have a long history and an undying devotion to one another. It is totally plausible that Claudia’s illness should, as Flavio explains it, have killed his own ambitions.

Violeta, however, is not persuaded that both her parents committing suicide is such a good plan. The toe-curling second of the film’s three sections focuses on the awkwardness of the couple’s other children and their families showing up for a ceremony to mark the renewal of Claudia and Flavio’s vows, which they have set up without revealing their intentions to anyone. By some measures they are a most self-involved and unappealing couple, which gives the film a real cutting edge.

The truth about the double suicide comes out cruelly in front of small children, in a speech by Violeta (“May they die happily ever after!”) and we begin to suspect, as does Flavio, that Claudia has set the whole thing up as a dramatic final performance. This will play out in the oddly banal, hushed setting of a Swiss Dignitas clinic, where Claudia is advised to select “a playlist to die to”. (The film’s music has indeed been lovingly curated, featuring not only Callas but also the salsa of Hector Lavoe and the great Spanish flamenco artist Antonio Molina.)

Marques-Marcet’s previous work takes problematic situations and follows the emotional logic as far as it can go. They are largely artifice-free but, by contrast, the busily choreographed free dance sequences of Dust, accompanied by Maria Arnal’s minimalist acapella score, do feel somewhat wedged in and are likely to split opinions. While they are striking as standalones, and the idea that dancing is the best antidote to death comes over loud and clear, they break the hard-earned emotional flow. It’s also hard to see where they are emerging from dramatically, unless it’s from somewhere deep in Claudia’s psyche – which is already quite visible to us from Molina’s gripping performance.

Molina, whose timeline stretches back to Luis Bunuel via Almodovar, retains all of her power in front of the camera. She plays Claudia as a physically fragile but spiritually resilient woman who has decided to enjoy the end of her life by doing what she knows best – performing a role, sometimes theatrically and sometimes delicately. If this happens to upset everyone around her, then bad luck to them. Castro as the comparatively muted and uncertain Flavio, does well to hold his own throughout their intense, intimate and beautifully paced conversations: ultimately these make for the strongest scenes in this moving, intelligent film.